Border Force Union: No Point Stopping Boats, Migrants Will Come Another Way

A group of people thought to be migrants walk through the immigration processing centre in
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Peter Caddle

The British government’s latest scheme aimed at ending the Channel migrant crisis will just end up fueling it, a union official representing Border Force members has claimed.

A spokesman for Britain’s Immigration Services Union (ISU), whose members serve in the country’s Border Force, has criticised the government’s latest plans to end the ongoing Channel boat migrants crisis.

After numerous other schemes have failed to deal with the issue, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s administration has now announced that it will ban any boat migrant from claiming asylum in Britain, and they will instead be sent either to Rwanda or another safe third country.

However, during an interview with the BBC, ISU spokeswoman Lucy Moreton said that the announcement would likely lead to an increase in the number of arrivals in the short term, with migrants becoming desperate to enter Britain before the new rules come into force.

“What it actually does is fuel the [people-smuggling services] that the criminals provide,” Moreton said, criticising the announcement of the measures.

The defeatist union official also expressed doubt as to how it could be possible for the plan to work once it does come into force, with plans to deport migrants to Rwanda having failed to materialise, and that no other third country has said it is willing to accept those deported by the British.

“This just doesn’t seem to be possible,” she said, describing the plan as ultimately being “quite confusing” — although offering no real proposals of her own as to what the authorities she represents might do beyond allowing the de facto open borders situation that exists at present to persist indefinitely.

Such a position was rejected by Alp Mehmet, the chairman of Migration Watch UK, who told Breitbart London that preventing foreign boat migrants from claiming asylum should ultimately be seen as a positive development.

“If what is being reported as likely to be in the next Immigration Bill is true it is to be welcomed,” he said. “Enshrining in law the requirement to detain and remove those arriving illegally is a significant step. As is the intention to disapply parts of the UK’s Human Rights Act.”

“Anyone arriving without permission and intending to apply for asylum must be left in no doubt that their application will not only be refused but that they will be removed,” the organisation head added. “Only this will dissuade people from risking their lives by jumping into rickety boats and head for Britain.”

The Border Force has often seemed institutionally resistant to enforcing the country’s borders, with the former head of the agency proclaiming in his final speech: “We’re all human beings, we’re all mammals, we’re all rocks, plants, rivers. Bloody borders are just such a pain in the bloody ass.”

The agency has also had a history of resisting implementing any measures aimed at curbing mass migration, with powers to push migrants back to France — a safe Western country — instead of escorting them to British shores seemingly never used.

That is not to say that these newest measures — which are set to be fully unveiled by the government on Tuesday — will succeed in any way, with the Tory Party having a history of taking up various tough-sounding schemes to reduce immigration that never work as intended, if they are implemented at all.

One particular issue highlighted by the ISU that could end up posing a problem is that of migrants arriving in Britain by lorry.

Although this entry route is relatively less popular than it once was in the current era of mass boat crossings, the union has expressed concern that current plans to shut off the small boat routes will do nothing but make people hop onto lorries again.

“This all focuses on small boats, not lorries, so the presumption is even if this stops small boats — which isn’t massively likely — but even if it does, that traffic will simply jump back onto lorries, which was what was being used before,” Moreton explained.

This concern was also dismissed by the head of Migration Watch UK, however, who said that an increase in migration via other routes should not dissuade Britain from dealing with the issue of boats.

“While stopping the boats might lead to more clandestine attempts to enter, that is not a valid reason to give up on stopping the boats,” he told Breitbart London, adding that using “any illegal means used to enter the country should debar [migrants] from being granted asylum in the UK.”

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